Blogs

Every month, we offer a puzzling satellite or aerial image of Earth.

Adios, San Juan! Today, we said goodbye (or rather adios) to the port of San Juan and hello/hola to the Atlantic Ocean. The past few days have been a whirlwind of unpacking, setting up our gear, securing our gear, mounting sensors, stretching cable from one end of the ship to the other, testing instruments, attending […]

Mouse Stress Defense:  Today the crew continued preparations for the Mouse Stress Defense investigation which will start after the arrival of mice on the SpaceX-14 Dragon vehicle. The crew reconfigured laptop cables and connected the Cell Biology Experiment Facility (CBEF) to a backup power source.  Space flight brings an extreme environment with unique stressors. Microgravity …

A Soyuz rocket stands at its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan ready to blast off Wednesday with three Expedition 55-56 crew members to the International Space Station. In the following two weeks the expanded Expedition 55 crew will conduct a spacewalk and welcome a new SpaceX Dragon cargo craft. Today, NASA astronauts …

Circadian Rhythms: Today, a crewmember began a three day European Space Agency (ESA) Circadian Rhythms experiment by donning the Thermolab Double sensors, which are to be worn for 36 hours.  The objective of the experiment is to get a better understanding of any alterations in circadian rhythms in humans during long-term space flights. Such knowledge …

In 30 days I’ll be a salty veteran.  I’m going out to sea for 3 1/2 weeks with a group of scientists I’ve never met, a fellow lab mate, and a professor from Rutgers.  We’re traveling to the North Atlantic to cleverly observe the largest assemblage of phytoplankton on our planet.  I’ve heard these research […]

A pair of U.S. astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut are just two days away from launching on a 50-hour, 34-orbit flight to the International Space Station. Flight Engineers Ricky Arnold and Drew Feustel will flank Soyuz Commander Oleg Artemyev inside the Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft and blast off Wednesday at 1:44 p.m. EDT from the Baikonur …

Veg-03:  Today the crew watered the Veg-03 plants and harvested leaves from each plant.  The leaves will then be preserved and inserted into cold stowage for later return to the Earth. The remainder of the plants will be left to grow and sprout new leaves. Veg-03 supports the proof-of concept for the Veggie plant growth …

As the International Space Station orbits Earth with three occupants already onboard, on the ground below in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, three more crewmates are engaged in activities leading up to a March 21 liftoff on a Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft to join them. (You can watch this launch live on NASA TV, with coverage beginning at 12:45 …